


“i made reservations.”

by clickingkeyboards



Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [54]
Category: Murder Most Unladylike Series - Robin Stevens
Genre: (sort of), Competition, Competitive, Friendship, Gambling, George Mukherjee functions out of spite, M/M, Male Friendship, Motivated by Spite, spite
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-24
Updated: 2019-12-24
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:21:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22090210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clickingkeyboards/pseuds/clickingkeyboards
Summary: Before their obsession with detection, the Junior Pinkertons made their reputation through one of George's more unorthodox skills. To describe the situation more accurately, George functions out of spite and Alexander just wants to impress him.Canon EraWritten for the fifty-fourth prompt in the '100 ways to say "I love you"' prompt list by p0ck3tf0x on Tumblr.
Relationships: Alexander Arcady & George Mukherjee
Series: one hundred ways to say 'i love you' [54]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1533164
Comments: 1
Kudos: 18





	“i made reservations.”

_Never flip a coin with George, Hazel. You’d think it was impossible, but I’m sure he cheats._

George has this odd sort of luck.

While I may believe that he cheats at flipping a coin, there is an astounding blessing of luck from the universe that is much more important: he excels at cards. When we were in First Year and not yet hooked on Hardy Boys and John Dixon Carr, and stuffed full of thoughts of murders and smuggling and spies and night-time raids, our obsession was cards. George had not yet clawed his way into being known as somebody who took no nastiness from anybody, so cards were how he made his mark.

It was during the spring term of First Year when the unfailingly rotten Shepard Minor teasingly asked George if he wanted to put his ‘cheating hands’ on a deck of cards. I will never understand why people seem to believe that all people from that part of the world are dirty-handed cheaters. Not one to back down from a challenge, he chucked his bag at me and strolled over to take a seat within the snickering circle of older boys.

After four exceedingly lucky hands, I saw the glint in his eyes the moment he realised that he had a skill that could be exploited. They played round after round and George won almost every single one, to my silent enjoyment and the fury of every student at the table. He walked away with a new and confident set in his jaw, eyes sparkling with delight and his head held high.

“Alex,” he said to me in giddy schoolboy tones, an enormous grin on his face and a bounce in his step that I had never seen before that day, “I think that I will rule Weston.”

“What?” I asked him with a chuckle in my voice, disbelief lacing my tone as I scoured his features for any sign of a joke. “What are you talking about, George?”

Grabbing the shoulder of my blazer, he stopped me in place and spun me around to look him in the eyes. “We’re going to have half of Weston bowing to me, Alex, and you’re going to help. If they treat me like an Indian ruffian who is a disgrace to the school now, I will have every student fearing me in less than a term.”

“With cards?” I asked him in disbelief.

Accompanying his words with a firm nod, George said, “With cards,” and turned back to walking through the halls of Weston to our next class.

I believe that spite can motivate anybody, and this situation was the start of that.

* * *

Our next visit into town saw us slipping away from the other boys in our dormitory to buy a pack of cards. While girls’ schools like Deepdean insist upon parading their First Year students around with a teacher looming over them so that they cannot do anything silly like run away, boys’ schools like Weston have decided that boys are to grow up as independent young men so that we can support women when we are older, so we are forced from the age of eleven to parade around the town alone. When you are in the older years, you are told not to help the frightened younger years because they must ‘learn on their own’. George declared this ‘utter bullshit’ in our Third Year and now goes out of his way to help the tearful younger years who you can typically find crying outside the pinnacle café of the town while older students stride past.

Privately, George and I do not understand why the world is so obsessed with the idea that men must take care of their wives. While some women are rather silly (take Mrs Daunt from The Orient Express as a prime example), the women of our age group that most boys are age are to grow up and marry are sharp, independent, and intelligent, and will never let men that they do not like push them around.

We pushed through the doors of the shop and George made a beeline for where he somehow knew the cards were. I wandered to the book section and notice a book with a rather interesting cover. It was an orange scene of an evening sky, four men seemingly fighting on a pier cast against the sky in greys and blues, while two young men in blazers and hats look on from a boat.

_The Hardy Boys: Footprints Under The Window._

I opened it to read a few pages and sunk into this rather odd detective story that riveted me from the first sentence. I turned to call for George to come and voice his approval only to find him standing by my side with his hands sunk into the pockets of his blazer. Putting on a fair impression of what the man at the counter sounded like, he said, “They don’t want the ‘dirty ruffian’ to ‘fall into gambling habits’ and ‘ruin half of the country’.”

“Goodness, George. You only want to ruin half of Weston,” I tease, holding out my hand. “Give me the cards and walk out of the shop. I’ll pay and be right out.”

After the purchase of this deck of cards, George insisted that the two of us spent hours practising dealing cards. At lunchtimes, he would deal and shuffle cards at increasing speeds, his nimble fingers playing over the side of the deck as he dealt at an astonishing pace. While he was a skilful dealer with a penchant for showmanship, working with flourishes and swirls and fanciful flicks of his fingers, I just became quick at dealing the cards and memorising each one that passed my face.

I was a key part of this plan; I just didn’t know what part that was. 

* * *

George told me one Saturday that I must join the game of poker taking place in the common room, then suggest wagering money.

“I can’t wager money!” I told him in astonishment, staring at where he was sprawled back on his bed and shuffling a deck of cards.

“ _I_ can’t wager money either, Alex,” he told me in a firm voice. “If I wager money, I’ll get maimed by everybody in Weston and called ‘dirty’ for the fiftieth time today.”

Realising what he meant in a sudden flush, I let a grin spread across my face despite how awful his idea was. “You want me to ask them to wager money so that you can jump into the game after a few rounds and con half of Weston out of their money?”

“Con, Alex?” he said with a mischievous grin. “Why, that would imply that I am weaselling money out of my fellow students in an illegal way! That’s rather insulting, don’t you think?”

“I’ll wager money,” I told him, digging into the bottom of my tuck box and pulling out my wallet.

“You’re a brick, Alex,” he said, reaching over to my tuck box and plucking out a barley sugar twist. “And thank you.”

* * *

“How did you know that there would be a game of poker?” I asked George on the way to the common room.

“I made reservations,” he said in sarcastic tones, slinging his arm around my shoulder and ruffling my hair. “You need a haircut, Alex.”

I stuck my tongue out at him as we walked into the common room.

“Alexander, are you playing?” Bob yelled from the central table. George was blatantly ignored.

“Absolutely!” I made my way over and played several rounds with them. I won twice and lost twice, and then set some coins on the table. “How about we play for money?”

There were excited gasps from all around the table as boys dug out coins from their blazer pockets and placed them on the tabletop. The bets piled up in the centre of the table and I was concerned at the amount I was going to lose, with a terrible hand and my fumbling hands shaking.

I felt a hand on my shoulder, and George said, “May I step in, Alex?”

With relief, I passed over my hand and stood behind George as he betted, raising the amount again and again with every turn. “George,” I whispered in his ear, settling my hand on his shoulder, close to his neck, “you ought to quit while you’re ahead.”

But he played on. The final round drew closer and closer, George pushing coin after coin into the centre.

“I open.”

“Check.”

“Call.”

“Check.”

“Raise.”

“Check.”

“Call.”

“Raise.”

“Raise.”

“Raise.”

The final round arrived and each of the boys at the table began to turn over their hands. Four of a kind. A full house. A flush. A straight. Four of a kind. Three of a kind. A pair. A straight. With concern, I squeezed George’s shoulder and whispered, “You do realise that you are utterly down on your luck, don’t you?”

“How rum, Mukherjee,” said Shepard Minor in tones that were supposed to appear low and conspiratory but were loud enough to be heard across the entire table. “What do you have? A high card?”

Ever the drama queen, George set out his cards in a dramatic flourish. “I believe that I’ve won your money, gentlemen.”

The uproar that followed was something I did not see or hear, as his grin as he turned around to face me made me blind to the shouting going on at the table, and the roar of the surf of his idiotic plan was a high tide in my ears.

* * *

“Do you think we ought to stop him before he’s in debt to half of Cambridge?” Daisy asked me as I leant against the wall beside herself and Hazel.

“Does he have some sort of… gambling problem?” Hazel asked, and I glanced over at her when she spoke. She had her new hat pulled over her dark hair, and her face was flushed an odd pink colour. Although Daisy is the prettiest girl I have ever seen, Hazel is not far behind, with dark eyes and a kind look about her round face. She also shares my love of cakes which George heartily disapproves of.

“No, not at all,” I told her with a smile as George pitched in yet more of his brother’s money. “When we were in First Year, you can imagine how everybody at Weston acted around him.”

Hazel winced with a sympathetic nod, while Daisy simply raised an eyebrow to goat me to continue. “Well, George decided to make his reputation by way of using his inordinate skill of cards to have half of the school in debt to him. He hasn’t played cards since our Second Year, so I won’t be astonished if he…”

George turned around and mouthed at me, “Royal flush.”

“Nevermind, he’s going to win.”

“Your best friend is a genius,” Daisy said as an enormous cry rang out from the other side of the room, Bertie leaping up from his chair and shouting some less than savoury words while Harold jokingly slapping George on the back of the head and called him a cheater.

“What’s that you told me once about George?” Hazel asked me, leaning forward off the wall to look at me.”

“That I think he cheats at flipping a coin?” Running a hand back through my hair, I laughed and said, “The universe has showered him with luck to make up for people’s unkindness.”

Daisy turned to me. “If anybody knew the trick to flipping a coin, it’s George.”

“There’s a trick?”

With a laugh, Daisy leant over to whisper in my ear as George strode over to us. “It’s a trick for genii only, Alexander.”

“Then perhaps your Hazel will teach me.”


End file.
